Essay on Education as Social Process

Essay on Education as Social Process – Education stands for deliberate instruction or training. Man does not behave in society impul­sively or instinctively He behaves in a way according to which he is trained. Some thinkers have equated it with socialisation. A few others regard education as an attempt to transmit the cultural norms of the group to its younger members.

It is also understood as a continuous effort on the part of the individuals to acquire more and more knowledge. All these three interpretations of education stress upon education as a process or a continuous entity. The word process stresses continuity.

Firstly, education, viewed as socialisation, is continuous. Socialisation is social learning. This social learning is not intermittent but continuous. Perfection in social learning is rarely achieved.

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The more we try to learn about our own society and fellow beings the more remains to be learned. Social learning begins at birth and ends only at death. It continues throughout our life. There is no point or state in our life at which we have learnt everything about one group or society and beyond that nothing remains to be studied.

We belong to different groups at different stages of our life. As these groups change we must learn new rules and new patterns of behaviour. Furthermore we do not always remain within the same role. We begin as children, pass through adolescence into adulthood, marry, become parents, enter middle age, retire, grow old and finally die.

With each role, comes pattern of behaviour that we must learn and, thus, throughout our life, we are involved in the socialisation process. Even at the door of death we are being socialised.

Secondly, education, viewed as an agent of cultural transmission, is also continuous. Culture is & growing whole. There can be no break in the continuity of culture. If at all there is a break, it only indicates the end of a particular human group. The cultural elements are passed on from generation to generation.

The family, school, and various other associations act as the agents of cultural trans­mission. Education in its formal or informal pattern has been performing this role since time imme­morial. Education can be looked upon as process from this point of view also.

Thirdly, education, implied as an attempt to acquire knowledge, is also continuous. Knowledge is like an ocean, boundless or limitless. No one has mastered it or exhausted it. No one can claim to do so.

There is a limit to the human genius or the human grasp of the things. The moral man can hardly know anything and everything about nature which is immoral. The universe is a miraculous entity. The more one tries to know of it, the more it becomes mysterious. Not only the Natural Universe but also the Social Universe is complex.

The human experience is limited to have a thor­ough knowledge of this universe. Hence, man since time immemorial, has been engaged in this endless endeavour of acquiring more and more knowledge about the Universe with all its complexity. Education, thus, is a continuous endeavour, a process.